GUEST COMMENTARY: Majoring in the minors

(UNDATED) Our economy is in shambles. Americans have lost their jobs, homes, health care and retirement plans. So where is the church? Imploding with internal schism over who’s in and who’s out — the “out,” of course, being lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. After more than 30 years arguing over human sexuality, my […]

(RNS4-APR01) Lisa Larges, a lesbian, has been unsuccessfully trying to get ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for more than 20 years. For use with RNS-LARGES-COLUMN, transmitted April 1, 2009. Religion News Service photo courtesy Lisa Larges.

(RNS4-APR01) Lisa Larges, a lesbian, has been unsuccessfully trying to get ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for more than 20 years. For use with RNS-LARGES-COLUMN, transmitted April 1, 2009. Religion News Service photo courtesy Lisa Larges.

(UNDATED) Our economy is in shambles. Americans have lost their jobs, homes, health care and retirement plans. So where is the church? Imploding with internal schism over who’s in and who’s out — the “out,” of course, being lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

After more than 30 years arguing over human sexuality, my own denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), is hemorrhaging members from both sides of the debate. Congregations opposing gay ordination are pulling out of the denomination, while LGBT Christians — especially those who would be pastors — are seeking opportunities in friendlier churches. The so-called “middle,” meanwhile, are worn thin from being tugged back and forth.


The one thing that all of us seem to have in common is a desire to get past the endless debates and long meetings and get out into the world. There’s work to be done, and there are church members hungry to do it.

But, as the recent decision in the church judicial system regarding my ordination has proven, it isn’t as easy as all that. If we could dig our own way out of this, we would have done so a long time ago. Since we can’t seem to make out our future, the only thing we have to look at is our past.

As Presbyterians, our past begins with the radical John Calvin. Sure, maybe we don’t often read “John Calvin” and “radical” so close together in the same sentence, but in the days when disagreeing with the institutional church could get you killed, he was not exactly a shrinking violet.

If Calvin’s message could be boiled down to a few words, it would be this: God is in charge. God. Not the institutions of the church, which were formed and upheld by human beings. Not those with the power or the money or the educational resources to assert their beliefs over others. God, and God alone, is in charge.

2009 marks Calvin’s 500th birthday, but we still can’t seem to grasp his radical ways. Then again, Jesus was born more than 1,500 years before Calvin, and we still haven’t caught on to his radical notion of loving one another, either.

At the Presbyterians’ national meeting last summer, delegates adopted new constitutional language that is intended to give a little more room for God to lead particular people and communities in the church. Instead of categorically rejecting the gifts and talents of LGBT people who long to serve the church, the new ordination standards would return us to the fundamentals: “Those who are called to ordained service in the church, … pledge themselves to live lives obedient to Jesus Christ, as Head of the Church.”


Unfortunately, at the same time, our church appears poised to defeat a move — again — to remove language that restricts ordination to those who pledge “fidelity within the covenant of marriage of a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.”

Calvin would tell us that God is in charge. Not our church’s constitution. Not the committees or governing bodies that oversee the question of who’s in and who’s out. God is in charge.

It’s time to get back out in the world, to lend our strength and our energy, our hope, and indeed, our faith, to a world more in need than ever to hear the good news. We no longer have the luxury of internal argument.

It’s time to end the spiraling cycles of self-destructive behavior. It’s time to acknowledge that God is in charge and that a lot of things in life are beyond our control or our understanding. It’s time to make space for all God’s people to live lives in obedience to Jesus Christ, loving and freely serving, and being who we are.

(Lisa Larges has sought ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for more than 20 years. A regional court recently ruled against her on a technicality. She serves at the minister director of a pro-LGBT church group, That All May Freely Serve.)

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!